(Yicai) Feb. 22 -- Multiple merchants in Yiwu, the Chinese city known as the world’s small goods capital, believe their business performance will improve this year compared with last year.

A staffer at a toy maker in Yiwu told Yicai that its sales volume jumped about 30 percent last year from the previous one, but the growth will be higher than 30 percent this year.

“The company will further invest to hike its production capacity, expand research and development capabilities, and hire 150 to 200 new workers this year,” the employee noted.

Orders from returning customers have increased so far this year compared to the same periods in previous years, said Liu Junming, an executive at a Yiwu-based sanitary ware firm, adding that its factory resumed production ahead of schedule after the Chinese New Year holiday.

Last year, the company’s sales jumped around 30 percent, and they are expected to increase more this year, Liu noted.

The popularity of do-it-yourself diamond paintings in China compensated the decline in export orders last year, Zheng Yang, a manufacturer of such products, told Yicai. Zheng also predicted that his domestic and overseas sales volumes would likely double this year from last year.

The number of foreign merchants in Yiwu has exceeded 20,000 so far this year, which is more than double the figure in the same period last year, said Gong Chenghao, deputy general manager of Yiwu Mall Group.

The store opening rate of Yiwu International Trade City, Yiwu’s most famous wholesale market, reached 94.6 percent yesterday, the first working day after the Chinese New Year holiday, up 2.1 percentage points from a year earlier, achieving a total traffic of 228,000 people, according to official data.

Last year, Yiwu’s foreign trade value jumped 18 percent to CNY566.1 billion (USD78.7 billion) from a year earlier, according to local customs authorities. Exports rose 16 percent to surpass the CNY500 billion threshold for the first time, and imports jumped 39 percent to CNY65.5 billion. All three growth rates far exceeded the national average.

Editor: Futura Costaglione